Datça is a district of

Muğla Province Muğla Province ( tr, , ) is a province of Turkey, at the country's south-western corner, on the Aegean Sea. Its seat is Muğla, about inland, while some of Turkey's largest holiday resorts, such as Bodrum, Ölüdeniz, Marmaris and Fethiye, are ...

in south-west

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

, and the center town of the district. The center is situated midway through the peninsula which carries the same name as the district and the town (

Datça Peninsula Datça is a district of Muğla Province in south-west Turkey, and the center town of the district. The center is situated midway through the peninsula which carries the same name as the district and the town (Datça Peninsula). It was a nahiya of ...

). It was a

nahiya A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level division w ...

Marmaris Marmaris () is a port city and tourist resort on the Mediterranean coast, located in Muğla Province, southwest Turkey, along the shoreline of the Turkish Riviera. Although Marmaris is known for its honey, its main source of income is internationa ...

district until 1928. Datça's first center in village of Reşadiye till 1947, when it was moved to present borough of İskele.

Name

The name Datça comes from

Stadia Stadia may refer to: * One of the plurals of stadium, along with "stadiums" * The plural of stadion, an ancient Greek unit of distance, which equals to 600 Greek feet (''podes''). * Stadia (Caria), a town of ancient Caria, now in Turkey * Stadi ...

, an ancient town near

Cnidus Knidos or Cnidus (; grc-gre, Κνίδος, , , Knídos) was a Greek city in ancient Caria and part of the Dorian Hexapolis, in south-western Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. It was situated on the Datça peninsula, which forms the southern side o ...

. ''Stadia'' developed into ''Tadya'', ''Dadya'', ''Dadça'', and then ''Datça''. Both the town and the peninsula of Datça were called Reşadiye for a brief period in the beginning of the 20th century, honoring the penultimate Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V Reşad, and some maps may still refer to the peninsula under this name; today Reşadiye is the name of one of the quarters of the town.

Geography

The long and narrow Datça Peninsula, whose outline follows the undulations of small bays and coves facing south or north all along its length which reaches near , corresponds almost exactly to the Datça district, with the addition beyond its

isthmus An isthmus (; ; ) is a narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across an expanse of water by which they are otherwise separated. A tombolo is an isthmus that consists of a spit or bar, and a strait is the sea counterpart of an isthmu ...

of a small panhandle in the direction of the south-east. The isthmus itself is only several hundred meters wide. The extreme end of the western tip of the district and the peninsula, the locality called Tekir, is the location of the ancient city of

Knidos Knidos or Cnidus (; grc-gre, Κνίδος, , , Knídos) was a Ancient Greece, Greek city in ancient Caria and part of the Dorian Hexapolis, in south-western Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. It was situated on the Datça peninsula, which forms the ...

. There is an ongoing debate on whether or not this location was the original site of the ancient city, a number of sources claiming that until the mid-4th century BCE, Knidos was halfway along the peninsula, near the present-day district center. The peninsula's eastern end is marked by the

fjord In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Ice ...

-like indentation of Bencik Cove, 1.5 km in length, at the end of which the narrow isthmus where it joins the mainland is found. This point is a natural curiosity which offers a wide view of the

Gulf of Gökova Gulf of Gökova ( tr, Gökova Körfezi) or Gulf of Kerme (Turkish: Kerme Körfezi, Greek: Κεραμεικός κόλπος, Latin: Ceramicus Sinus, English: Ceramic Gulf or Gulf of Cos), is a long (100 km), narrow gulf of the Aegean Sea bet ...

in the north and the

Gulf of Hisarönü A gulf is a large inlet from the ocean into the landmass, typically with a narrower opening than a bay, but that is not observable in all geographic areas so named. The term gulf was traditionally used for large highly-indented navigable bodies ...

in the south and is called ''Balıkaşıran'' (literally, ''the place where fish may leap across'') and is also often used for the portage of small boats. According to

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known f ...

, during the Persian invasions in 540 BC, the Knidians had sought to dig a canal at this spot as a defensive measure and in order to transform their territory into an island. But an oracle was consulted who reportedly said "If the gods had so willed, they would have made your land an island. Do not pierce the isthmus." Whereupon they surrendered to the Persians.

Settlement

The quarters of the city of Datça are Reşadiye, Eski Datça 'Old Datça' and İskele 'quay', separated by about a mile from each other. Reşadiye was the original administrative core when the town was renamed Datça and turned into a district center in 1928, before it was moved to İskele quarter. The center town is crossed by the short course of the Datça Stream (''Datça Çayı'' in

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...

The Datça district has nine villages scattered along the peninsula. These are; Cumalı, Emecik, Hızırşah, Karaköy, Kızlan, Mesudiye, Sındı, Yakaköy, Yazıköy. Historically, apart from small coastal patches, Datça Peninsula has two fertile areas along its length. The whole of the eastern half is bare, mountainous and scarcely inhabited. The western part is also mountainous, rising in places over 1,000 meters, but has towards its western end on the south side a considerable extent of well-watered land reaching to the coast at Palamutbükü locality and supporting a group of villages known collectively as ''Betçe'' (''the five villages''). These are; Mesudiye, Sındı, Yakaköy, Yazıköy, Cumalı. The village of Mesudiye, very near the sea shore has a jetty owned by the community of villagers. The village's bay is called Hayıtbükü. Palamutbükü locality, more to the west, also has a little pier which allows boats to moore. Palamutbükü today is a holiday village with a long beach. The second and larger area of good land is in the middle of the peninsula southwest of the median isthmus dividing the two halves and centered on the town of Datça. The region's promising potential was noted already in the 1880s by the

hydrographer Hydrography is the branch of applied sciences which deals with the measurement and description of the physical features of oceans, seas, coastal areas, lakes and rivers, as well as with the prediction of their change over time, for the primary p ...

Thomas Abel B. Spratt in the following terms: A point of note on the general settlement pattern of these villages is that the locations chosen were never in the immediate coastline, but always at a mile's distance or more from the sea and at a relatively safe altitude on the slopes of a hill. The reason was from times immemorial was the fear of

pirates Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...

, advantaged as they were by the intricate geology of shores of southwestern Turkey and of the many islands and islets that are its natural extensions, in an environment not unlike that of the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...

. Piracy remained a serious security problem well until the beginning of the 20th century and especially during the weakening of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

and the issue often necessitated foreign intervention.

Tourism

Datça Peninsula is popular among tourists, especially by mariners, because of its many coves and larger bays, which are promoted as part of the

Blue Cruise A Blue Cruise, also known as a ''Blue Voyage'' () or ''Blue Tour'' (), is a term used for recreational voyages along the Turkish Riviera, on Turkey's southwestern coast along the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. The cruise is typically a week- ...

along Turkey's southwest coast. Boats (usually

gulet A ''gulet'' () is a traditional design of a two-masted or three-masted wooden sailing vessel (the most common design has two masts) from the southwestern coast of Turkey, particularly built in the coastal towns of Bodrum and Marmaris; althoug ...

s) depart from

Bodrum Bodrum () is a port city in Muğla Province, southwestern Turkey, at the entrance to the Gulf of Gökova. Its population was 35,795 at the 2012 census, with a total of 136,317 inhabitants residing within the district's borders. Known in ancient t ...

, or Datça. The road from Marmaris to Datça is rough in parts. Datça Yarımadası'ndaki koylar 1

Apart from the traditional settlements, there are also a dozen recently constructed vacation villages on the peninsula. Datça has become a major rock climbing destination since about 2013, most popular from fall to spring.Rock climbing in Datça
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Forest Fires

On 29 August 2012, a fire in the town of Emecik, Datca burned 75 hectares of forest.

Notable natives

Turkish literature Turkish literature ( tr, Türk edebiyatı) comprises oral compositions and written texts in Turkic languages. The Ottoman and Azerbaijani forms of Turkish, which forms the basis of much of the written corpus, were highly influenced by Persian la ...

, Datça is associated with the poet and the accomplished translator (notably of

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

)

Can Yücel Can Yücel (; August 21, 1926 – August 12, 1999) was a Turkish poet noted for his use of colloquial language. Biography Can Yücel was the son of a former Minister of National Education, Hasan Âli Yücel, who left his mark on the history of e ...

who spent the last decades of his life in Datça and is also buried here.

Twin Towns

Houma, Louisiana Houma ( ) is the largest city in, and the parish seat of, Terrebonne Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is also the largest principal city of the Houma– Bayou Cane–Thibodaux metropolitan statistical area. The city's government ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Footnotes

External links

Official Datça HistoryShort movie about Eski DatcaRock Climbing in Datça
{{DEFAULTSORT:Datca Turkish Riviera Populated coastal places in Turkey Aegean Sea port cities and towns in Turkey Populated places in Muğla Province Fishing communities in Turkey Districts of Muğla Province